Much more than the usual issues around tariffs, this story should highlight the grave issues of the dispute settlement body w/i the WTO. A back-of-the-envelope tally puts aggregate economic losses in the billions. A failure to address this in under a decade is more than just a slip-up; it represents a systematic failure of the dispute settlement mechanism that should not have occurred in this day. Oh, and you can be sure that the EU was well aware the challenged measure were always a national treatment violation. Those measures should have been struck down with a baseball bat within six months. Perhaps if the costs of litigating these violation were lower LDCs would find it more appealing to exercise their rights as co-equal members, and the EU could leave these monkeyshines in the mercantilist era where they belong.

Of course the EU is the Universal Villain, but the dispute could not have lasted that long if some of the EU's issues had not held some substance. The very fact that it was settled with bilateral treaties with the relevant S. American countries would point to those issues having been addressed in part. An ayatollesque approach to free trade is not going to work any more, especially since Europeans are beginning to realize they are played for fools by the other big trade blocs.

From my year living in China, in the southwest (the only region presumably suitable for banana production) I don't remember ever seeing bananas for sale or being eaten...But maybe they're just really good at hiding it?

China also imports bananas a great deal, because its production still can not meet its domestic market demand although China is the 2nd biggest banana producer.For example,over a half of the exported banana of the Philippines exported to China in 2011.

The most interesting, and potentially alarming, feature of the banana as a staple crop is that it is almost a monoculture. That is a real genetic monoculture like varieties of rose, say, that are all genetically identical (and notoriously unstable) not a loosely-described 'monoculture' of seed-based crops like wheat that are similar but not genetically uniform.

This is, of course, because crop bananas have no seeds, and it renders them particularly prone to epidemics.